Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The Epic Battle of Good Versus Evil

A couple of days after Christmas I went with some of my family to watch the new Gullivers Travels starring Jack Black.  While it was a fantastic movie, that's not what most caught my attention, nor what I plan on writing about today.  The thought that crossed my mind was the epic battle of good vs. evil.  Generally, if you were to ask someone what colors represent good and evil I imagine the answer would most often be that white is good and black is evil, and I doubt anyone would refute that as a certifiable fact.  However, this particular movie decided on using the colors of red and blue to reference evil and good respectively.  Where the people who were portrayed as peaceful except to defend their country from attackers had an obvious blue theme, while the other civilization was a war mongering nation bent on taking control over the others, and donned red clothing and a red flag.  Interesting, not really a brand new revelation or anything earth shattering enough to blow your mind, but interesting to me.  It made me ponder on and search for instances where red was used for evil and blue for good.  The first instance I came against was that of the light sabers in Star Wars.  As if it wasn't enough to dress up Darth Vader in a black suit, they also gave all of those who embraced the dark side red light sabers.  In comparison, the Jedi Knights had a variety of different colors, but rest assured that blue was among the dominant colors used.



 Still not convinced, lets turn to a more historical reference, the cold war.  What color was used to represent communists I ask.  That's right, it was red, and I doubt any would dare to argue in defence of communism.  (That being said I in fact know multiple people who would, in fact, defend communism, not out of an actual belief that communism was right of course, only for the sake of being able to debate, so no need to prove me wrong with your communism was a good idea propaganda, thanks).  Lets look at another example, Tron.  The original creator and those who are against the new reigning tyrant all have blue glowing lines.  Those who are against and oppressing these poor programs, orange.  Granted, orange is not red, but it is quite similar, and if nothing else it at least provides another example where blue is depicted as being good.  If there is anyone who would read this and still feel the need to disagree that blue represents good and red evil, simply google it, and see what results pop up, thats what I did.  The only other specific example I could find was in a game called infamous, apparently blue xp is good and red xp is evil, I honestly have no clue what that even means, other than the fact that it supports my rantings.
 Well, it's time to get down to the real purpose of this article, and I would guess that by now it's probably not too difficult to imagine where this is headed.  Anyone living in Utah understands that there is a heated rivalry between two Universities, Brigham Young University and University of Utah (Utah State get over yourself, you're not anyone's rival, you're more like the handicapped little brother the rest of us all feel bad for).  Any true battle, for it to be of worth, should be one where good and evil go toe to toe and fight it out.  Therefore, it seems necessary, in order to give validity to the rivalry, to label one as good and the other evil.  Many points could surely be made in putting either as good or as evil, but what it really boils down to is this; when seen on the playing field which pulls the emotion of good and which pulls the emotion of evil.  No doubt anyone who attends these schools would surely say that the other is the evil, so we must put aside emotion and preference to determine this.  Lets leave it up to a friend we all love and rely on, the media.  As previously proven, the media has claim on red being evil and blue being good, and who are we to argue.  There must be a reason why these colors have been chosen for their purpose.  So BYU, as it's proud blue denotes, must therefore represent good, and Utah, with it's deep red denotes evil.  And remember, this is not simply my interpretation as a BYU fan, but rather the cold hard facts using an unbiased perception.
Blue and White, Gotta be the good guys!
Red with quite a bit of black.  Right like I'd believe they're not evil

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Really Las Vegas Airport, Really

For Christmas I have returned to the wonderful world of NY for a week, quite exciting.  Except of course for the fact that by NY I mean the TOWN of Horseheads (Which I guess is better than the village, but not by much), and not something cool like New York City.  Anyways, the real point of this is how ridiculous flying is.  I really wish someone could give me a logical answer as to why it costs less money to fly a longer distance.  In order to cross the country I have to start off by going the wrong direction, southwest to Las Vegas!  Yeah, it has to be cheaper for the airline to take me the exact opposite direction of where I need to go first.  And then when I arrive to Las Vegas, it's not enough to simply force me to travel the wrong direction and making my trip take longer, but I am also forced to go through security twice!  That's right, the geniuses who designed the Las Vegas airport decided it made sense to make people who have already gone through a security check, leave the secured area in order to go to a different terminal, fantastic.  But alas I survived the ridiculous journey and am now here in the land of nothing to do and no one to do it with.  Luckily Christmas is just around the corner, and we all know what that means.  FOOD!  That's right, no need to get excited about presents these days, I already buy pretty much anything that I need or really want.  Family, I see them every few months, and one of my brothers at least once a week, so its nice, but the food, glorious amounts of delicious food to be had.  Check this out, not only are we going to have a Christmas ham, but an entire turkey as well.  I know what you're thinking, yeah but Christmas means family get-togethers with tons of people, right?  Wrong, at this feast of Christmastime their will be a grand total of six of us, including my parents who eat barely anything at all.  Thats right, not just one, but two full sized dinners for a whopping six people, Gotta love the holidays.

Monday, December 20, 2010

The Beginning

Since New Years time is just around the corner I figured it's high time to start making some resolutions which I'll probably try to keep up for January and then they'll all just slowly fade away.  One of those things just happens to be keeping a journal, or at least some sort of record of my life.  Also I figure that since not even I can read my own handwriting, writing things down in a physical journal would probably not turn out to be the best idea.  So what could be better than storing all of these glorious thoughts I have on the interwebs and let whoever feels as though they have a strong enough stomach to handle it, read it.  Enjoy!